A Healthy Relationship Between Diet and Exercise

“Burn off” those holiday calories….

“Do THIS workout to work off last nights dessert”….

“Eat THIS and do THAT” for the PERFECT body….

These are all marketing gimmicks to get you to buy someone’s product. Which is sad, because diet and exercise actually go hand in hand! Developing a healthy relationship between food and exercise is crucial to success. Keep reading for some tips of how to develop this healthy relationship :)

Food is fuel

Eating healthy makes you want to be healthy. When you eat healthy you have more energy, you are more productive, you are happier, you have more motivation and you perform better! When you eat poorly you feel bloated, tired and lazy.

If you want a healthier and happier life filled with motivation, you need to be fueling your body and mind with healthy foods! This leads me to my next point.... what are healthy and unhealthy foods anyway?

Understand healthy and unhealthy food groups

If you are still listening to the advice that "carbs are bad for you" you need to ERASE THIS FROM YOUR MEMORY NOW. Carbohydrates are your bodies preferred source of energy! Advertisements and marketing schemes try to make the distinction between healthy and unhealthy so difficult.... but it is SO simple. Just follow these general rules below!

- Healthy foods: Any food from the Earth, any product processed from natural ingredients (like pasta and oatmeal), certain animal products (eggs, chicken, fish, turkey, dairy), certain processed foods with low fat and sugar

- Unhealthy foods: Fast food, fried food, sweeteners, excess sugar, heat up foods (For example, Jimmy Dean)

There are more rules involved with each of these like macronutrients and portion sizes (which would need its own article); but as a general rule of thumb, this is an easy way to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy foods.

Exercise is NOT a punishment

You do not have to workout to burn off calories from the dessert you had last night. If you feel like you are forcing a workout as punishment from something you ate, that is not healthy. You should be working out to feel good physically and mentally... eating a piece of cake the night before a workout is not grounds for you to overload yourself in the next day's workout. Just enjoy the piece of cake and let it be!

Exercise to feel good

As already mentioned, you should be working out to feel good physically and mentally. If you are working out to look a certain way, you will never be satisfied. Why?

Because your physique is always changing, and there will always be things you wish you could change about your appearance!

Thus, if you exercise with the mindset of feeling good and being healthy, as opposed to "I am gonna workout to be the hottest in the room" then you WILL be successful and be satisfied everyday (unlike the latter).

Eat right to feel good and find balance!

A life without cake, pizza and ice cream sounds miserable. As a fitness enthusiast, I still eat these things! *gasp*

I like to follow a diet with the 80/20 rule. I truly believe that if you eat healthy almost every meal and do not snack much, then the slice of pizza on a weekend night is fine!

Once you get into the mindset of eating healthy and develop a lifestyle of healthy meals, those unhealthy snacks and temptations are not even a daily thought! Therefore, once you have developed good habits and you know how to balance your diet then eat the dang slice of pizza and enjoy it!